I got it from Seed (my favorite little science mag, linked on the left of the main page). (link to guide)
6 Responses to Guide to Political Interference in Science
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I agree that there’s too much political interference in science, but it’s a dodgy thing to fix, because we’re each going to see the interference through our own lense of biases. For instance, from the website you linked to I see this:
“Global warming is one of the most serious challenges facing us today.”
In your previous post on “Freedom to Lie” you say “For some reason, the people questioning the Holocaust never turn out to have mainstream ideas on Jews and Israel. I wonder why that is.” Well, for some reason everyone I hear saying that “Global warming is one of the most serious challenges facing us today” thinks that the government can allocate resources more efficiently than a free flow of capital and ideas. Why is that?
Regardless of the number of Nobel prize winners that think that global warming is real and caused by man, in what way is a potential 4.5 degree C rise in the temperature of the earth over the next 100 years the most serious challenge we face today?
What about malaria, which kills 1.2 million people per year? Why is that not the most serious challenge facing us today? And we know how to combat malaria, but a bunch of “scientists” have restricted the use of mosquito killing agents because of potential harm to the environment. What’s better to save? Endangered birds or 1.2 million people per year? Is this not politicized science?
What about global hunger? We could implement disease resistant genetically modified crops in Africa and make serious progress toward reducing global hunger, but there are a bunch of “scientists” in Europe that say it would result in contamination of the “organic” crops of Europe, and therefore they would ban agricultural trade with Africa. There are supposedly 854 million people suffering from malnutrition in the world, and we could do something about it, but politicized science is standing in the way.
In the face of these immediate, catastrophic problems with realistic, measurable solutions right in front of us, these scientists want us to focus on global warming. They want to work on the problem that will require billions of dollars, and we won’t know if they had any impact for 100 years. If they were wrong, maybe our grandchildren will be able to say, wow, that was a waste of resources?
I’d like a job with an unlimited budget and no way to measure my results, too, but it’s not likely to happen. So many of these scientists are employed by government agencies, both here and in Europe. Government always tends toward the unsolvable problems, because that the best way to get an unlimited budget with no accountability. So, we wind up with a “War on Drugs”, a “War on Terror”, things that consume billions and billions of dollars and no one can say if we’re winning these “wars”. We get a CDC that lists as one of it’s top priorities gun control, as if a Glock is a communicable disease. We get a “War on Poverty” that keeps redefining poverty so that we can never claim victory. We redefine words like “hunger” to “food insecurity” so that if any child, anywhere, ever woke up and didn’t get breakfast then he gets counted as suffering from “hunger”, despite the fact that obesity is rampant among the poor in America.
We’ll never get the politics out of science entirely, because scientists want to do more than just solve an equation, they want to change the world. To change the world requires more than just an answer, it requires a plan, and plans attract planners.
We could do a lot better, though, if we more clearly separated the scientists from the politicians. The government is paying for the scientists at the NIH, the CDC, the NSF, the DOE, all the various grants, etc., etc. How realistic is it to expect that a bunch of politicians are going to fund all these projects and NOT try to influence the direction of the research?
One of the areas in the US where we have massive private investment into pure, non-political science is the pharmaceutical industry. Billions spent on pure science that actually saves lives on a daily basis. And they’re vilified. All across Europe and Canada, governments have nationalized healthcare and “negotiate” with the drug companies to obtain their medicines at near-cost. The US consumer pays inflated drug prices in order to subsidize the below market prices paid by Canadians and Brits, because somebody’s got to pay for that R&D work. Now we’re talking about having the US government “negotiate” as well as part of the Medicare program, so pretty soon that avenue of funding this non-political science will disappear as well.
If it winds up that the only way to get science funded is through the politicians, then the only science we’ll get will be the science the politicians want us to have.
Kevin, you say:
“Everyone I hear saying that “Global warming is one of the most serious challenges facing us today” thinks that the government can allocate resources more efficiently than a free flow of capital and ideas. Why is that?”
I don’t know how to answer that question. I get my science information from science magazines, peer-reviewed journals, and the occasional book written by a scientist or science journalist. Occasionally (like with “The Skeptical Environmentalist”) I get it from a layman who compiles pretty good evidence and shows it to me.
I have no idea what those people think about government or allocation of resources. I don’t understand how you do. I honestly am confused by your statement.
But even if you’re right, it’s not enough. The site I linked to talks about specific instances of governmental intereference in science, including climate change. Let’s address those instances. Was there intereference or not? If so, is it ok to do that?
If the people compiling that data and finding those instances are motivated by something bad, does that affect whether they’re right about governmental interference? You mentioned my Holocaust-denier post. Note that I attacked their points first, before attacking their motivation. Are these people right about the intereference or not?
I don’t like the idea of politicians lying, suppressing, and generally misleading people about the science. That’s what this post is about.
And though it may be interesting in some way, I’m not going to try to figure out which of the world’s problems should be labelled as among the most serious, or whether climate change should be among them. What I will say is that the data shouldn’t be supressed.
But as a rule, scientists don’t make policy. If a scientist (I don’t understand why you put quotes around the word, so I won’t) says that DDT is bad for birds, it’s up to the politicians to decide what to do. I don’t see how that’s politicized science. If DDT is bad for birds (or whatever), then scientists are right to say so. Would you say that scientists should pretend that it’s not true?
It’s strange to point to good science (meaning accurate and valid) and complain that the data forces people to make bad decisions. If you think that DDDT should be allowed in more places than it already is, don’t blame the data, or the scientists who compiled it. Blame the politicians who acted on the data in a way you don’t like. [Incidentally, Seed magazine recently reported that DDT is the best bet for controlling malaria.]
I’d rather that scientists say, “here’s what we’ve found,” and “here’s what we recommend.” Then the politicians can decide what to do. My complaint isn’t that the politicians didn’t follow the scientists recommendations, it’s that they suppressed and lied about the data in the first place.
I agree with you that there’s always been some twisting of science for political ends, and that there always will be. As it happens, I believe that this administration has brought that twisting and suppressing to shocking new lows. But that’s beside the point for me. I don’t want to suppress evidence no matter what it says or who like it best.
Hmmm, I think you read my reply and thought that I disagreed with you about something…
So, let’s agree on a few things:
Most scientists agree that climate change is occurring.
There is too much political interference with science.
This administration has taken that level of interference to shocking levels.
Okay, now let’s look at the rest. My problem with the article you linked isn’t that these scientists have a theory that climate is changing, or that they feel that they’ve been interfered with. My point is that this particular group you’re citing isn’t just trying to say “we found this data and it’s being supressed”, they’re trying to set the priorities (the MOST SERIOUS CHALLENGE). I didn’t say “people who believe in global warming” always believe government can allocate resources better, I said people who “think it’s the MOST SERIOUS CHALLENGE we face” believe that. These are not scientists just trying to get the data out, they’re trying to set the agenda. They want to be both the scientist AND the policy maker.
And that’s where I get to my next point, that we’re always going to have political interference in science of one kind or another. You’re right, this administration appears to have taken an unethical, luddite, non-science-based approach to several programs that SHOULD be science-based. Not just global warming (where they have tried to defund and supress reports that said things they didn’t agree with), but also the Leon Kass panel put together several years ago. You could probably even throw in pre-war intelligence in Iraq, where they may have heard only what they wanted to hear, and attempted to discredit that which they did not.
This administration may be bad, but they’re certainly not the only ones. And the reason I put scientist in quotations sometimes is because I believe that, regardless of the degree you hold, once you start fudging your data to acheive a particular result, you’re not really a scientist, you’re a politician with a spreadsheet.
And so we get fellas like Stephen Schneider, who is one of the “Concerned Scientists”. He’s also quoted as saying “once the greenhouse effect became a public issue I became more of a politician than a scientist”. He’s also one of the very same scientists that used to worry that we had a “Global Cooling” problem. The union of concerned scientists is an advocacy group urging action on global warming. They’re lobbyiests. That’s what they do. And what they want is more government funding for their programs.
Much the same are the French scientists who say that genetically modified crops are inherently unsafe, and therefore African countries must be blocked from using them. They have data, but they also have an agenda, and that agenda is to protect the unionized farms of France. Their data just happens to support this position, despite the decades of actual usage of these crops in other countries.
For another point of view (opposite to the Union of Concerned Science) you can see JunkScience.com, where they’re all about the depoliticization of science, but from the point of view that Anthropogenic Climate Change is a fraud and DDT should be used in everyone’s morning coffee.
I agree, science has been overly politicized. I happen to believe it started with the scientists themselves. This admistration has been using (what I believe to be) unethical means in an attempt to counter that politicization.
[NOTE: The original link went to a page that wasn’t very well laid out. I changed the link to go to a page that shows the interference in alphabetical order.]
Ok, we agree on those three things. The second two were all I was saying in my post, so the rest of this is sort of unrelated, I think.
I linked to an article which cited lots of governmental wrongdoing. This is what I care about and what I’m trying to comment on. If you agree with that, then I guess I got a little confused about what you were trying to say.
I personally couldn’t care less if scientists try to set policy. That’s their right as citizens. But I do care when elected officials lie and distort, and this administration has done it way beyond where it’s reasonable to say, “oh well, it happens all the time.”
All the rest, whether DDT scientists are fudging numbers (are they?), or the CDC lists gun control as a top priority (which I can’t find), or whether scientists are behind the war on terror (seriously?), all seems unrelated to the government lying about science.
Here’s an update on the Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200701/NAT20070123a.html
Now, I’ll stipulate that CNSNews.com is a partisan source, but I think they fairly make the point that UCS is NOT a group of scientists worried about political influence, but rather a group of advocates trying to influence science in the very manner they decry.
I couldn’t care less. UCS isn’t a government organization using my tax dollars incorrectly because of their twisting, distorting, and ignoring science.
I don’t care if they’re LOBBYIST for the CIGARETTE industry. The point is that they’ve come up with a long list of governmental assaults on science.
Once again: that’s what’s important here.
So far, no one seems to disagree that the list is correct or damning. So far, everyone seems to be happier attacking the people bringing the list. Why?